Licensing question: How is a 4 CPU VPS server licensed

already my second post. I hope this is the right place to ask this question.

I have been looking over the pricing model and I as myself how a VPS (Virtual Private Server) would be handled. Let's say you have a VPS rented with 4 CPUs on it. But there are 20 other customers on the server. So you don't _actually_ have free reign over all 4 CPUs. What is my best licensing option for this scenario?

1) LiteSpeed does not currently offer discount for VPS customers or shared hosting customers.

2) Our license is tied to to the number of "real-cpus" exposed your server. For example, if you are fortunate enough to have 16 CPUs and partition those resources into 4 virtual servers of 4 CPUs each, then each server would need the 4 CPU license for maximum performance. You can use a 1 or 2 CPU license on a 4 CPU server but you would not get the maximum performance and scalability.

I do understand that it is hard to come up with a pricing model. Maybe a leasing model? I wouldn't know how to licencse it either. It is just that business wise it will be harder and harder to license based on CPU number. In 1 or 2 years we might have 4 x quad core CPUs in the low end part of the leased dedicated server market starting at 40 EUR a month. Just look at the prices now:

I would imagine that not a lot of people would be willing to pay thousands upon thousands additionally just for the web server in this scenario ... Don't get me wrong, if lsws holds what it promises I think it might even be underpriced right now. But what good is it to leave out thousands upon thousands of business customers in the whole VPS/leased dedicated market?

Also, I have a hard time imagining what the implications of using a 1-2 CPU license are when running on a 4 CPU machine. What is the actual performance difference? Can you elaborate?

I think we will figure out something making senses by that time.
1-2 cpu license means that lshttpd itself only takes 1 or 2 cpu, so the unused processing power can be used by DB and External application like PHP or Ruby etc.
However, for serving mostly static content, 4 CPU is the best match for a 4 CPU machine.

We see that the optimal solution for the emerging virtualization market and current VPS market is to have direct deals with VPS providers so that the cost saving for LiteSpeed licensing can be passed on to each VPS host. Rather than having each VPS user sub-license another LiteSpeed license. Of course, everything is in the deals but we already have discussions internally on how we will approach this issue. =)